Three members of Kasia Janus’ household have been killed in a infamous string of poisonings 40 years in the past. She’s making an attempt to be taught extra about their lives because the anniversary nears.
Madison, Wisconsin — Kasia Janus stares at newspaper clippings unfold throughout her eating room desk.
There’s a lot right here, however nonetheless, it seems like a lot is lacking.
For years she by no means learn these articles, and even knew a lot of them existed.
Her mother hid them in storage containers, hoping to present her youngsters a standard childhood, so far as attainable from headlines warning of worry, poisoning and demise.
Now these headlines are right here on Kasia’s desk — a reminder of a tragedy that tore by her household, and of the lacking items in a puzzle she’s decided to resolve.
7 deaths, uncounted fears
Killer in all probability not psychotic, physician believes
Close-knit household ready for justice
Every time she flips by these information, Kasia sees one thing new. But she additionally sees with obvious readability what isn’t there: her story.
For many years, Kasia averted telling it. She saved her personal emotions and recollections about what occurred boxed up like these newspaper clippings.
She was only a 4-year-old preschool pupil in suburban Chicago when somebody slipped cyanide into Extra-Strength Tylenol bottles throughout the town’s metro space.
Seven folks have been killed in what has since grow to be a infamous unsolved homicide case. The poisonings terrorized better Chicago, sparked nationwide panic, impressed a troubling string of copycats and prompted one of many largest product recollects in historical past.
It’s been practically 40 years since September 29, 1982, the day authorities documented the primary victims’ deaths. No one has been charged within the killings. Police say they’re hoping advances in DNA know-how might assist them uncover new proof, however there’s been no public signal of any leads within the investigation for years.
The Tylenol poisonings are the explanation there’s now tamper-proof packaging on many medicines and meals, however the case that after panicked the nation has pale from the highlight.
Kasia, now 44, thinks about it every single day. As the fortieth anniversary nears, she’s a lady on a mission — not making an attempt to crack the case, however looking for solutions of her personal.
Of the seven victims within the Tylenol killings, three have been members of her household.
Kasia misplaced her dad, an uncle and an aunt in a matter of days. Now, many years later, she’s making an attempt to do all the pieces she will be able to to search out them.
“What was my dad’s favorite color? What was he like in school? What was he like as a boss? … Good and bad, I want to hear those stories, because it’s a reflection of who I am.”
There’s nonetheless a lot she doesn’t find out about who they have been, and a lot she’s struggling to know about what occurred 40 years in the past. One factor she does know: She’s able to share her story.
Her interviews with Act Daily News, carried out on the telephone and in particular person during the last a number of months, are Kasia’s first time ever talking to a reporter in regards to the case.
The legacy of the killings, she says, shouldn’t be forgotten.
“It is something that altered the life of every person in the world. … And I want people to know that, yeah, this was my family,” Kasia says, “and it has changed all of us.”
She remembers whispering in her dying father’s ear
Kasia was together with her father the second he purchased the cyanide-laced Tylenol that killed him.
On that September day, the postal employee picked his daughter up, as he usually did, from preschool at Our Lady of the Wayside within the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, Illinois.
They stopped by a close-by grocery retailer on the way in which residence.
Kasia all the time liked operating errands together with her dad. She needed to go in every single place he did.
She remembers strolling with him down the aisles of Jewel-Osco that day. He picked out a bouquet of gladiolus for her mom.
Kasia paused to level out a travel-sized bottle of mouthwash. She liked the way it slot in her hand so simply.
That’s when her dad picked up the bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol.
They headed residence collectively. She didn’t know then it could be the final time.
Her dad wasn’t feeling effectively after they acquired residence and took the Tylenol earlier than heading to mattress.
Kasia remembers listening to her mother scream for assist when he wouldn’t get up. And she’ll always remember how she stood beside the mattress whereas they waited for the paramedics to come back and whispered in her dad’s ear.
“Tata, it’s me. I know you’re playing a game. Just wake up.”
For years, Kasia blamed herself.
The household had gathered to mourn when tragedy struck once more
Paramedics rushed Adam Janus to Northwest Community Hospital, only some blocks away. Within hours, he was gone.
At first, docs suspected he’d had a coronary heart assault.
To his household and pals, it didn’t make sense. Adam Janus was 27 years outdated — within the prime of his profession as an up-and-coming postal employee who’d ascended the ranks from mail service to supervisor in just some years. In his spare time, he tinkered in a basement workshop in his Arlington Heights residence, making items for grandfather clocks.
He was a faithful father to Kasia and her youthful brother, Tom. And a loving husband who’d began wooing his spouse, Teresa, in Poland and saved sending romantic letters for years to persuade her to affix him in America.
His demise devastated and shocked his close-knit Polish immigrant household, who rapidly converged on the Arlington Heights residence to supply their help.
His youthful brother, Stanley Janus, got here to the home to mourn together with his new bride, Theresa Tarasewicz Janus. They’d not too long ago gotten married and went to Hawaii for his or her honeymoon. Stanley advised Adam’s spouse they’d do something they might to assist her.
Kasia remembers how they got here and sat beside her that day as she curled up on a cushion in her favourite nook of the lounge.
“What happened?” they requested.
Kasia described how her dad wouldn’t get up, even when she whispered in his ear. She didn’t know why.
Adam Janus immigrated to the US from Poland. A framed citizenship certificates and a pipe her dad as soon as smoked are among the many keepsakes Kasia cherishes.
Kasia nonetheless has the uniform her dad wore when he labored for the submit workplace. His identify is sewn inside. Sometimes she places on his coat and imagines him sporting it.
“They were so grief-stricken that they had a headache,” Kasia recollects. “They needed something to calm themselves down.”
So each of them took Extra-Strength Tylenol from the bottle her dad had purchased earlier that day.
Her uncle collapsed on the kitchen flooring of Kasia’s residence. Her aunt collapsed in the lounge quickly afterward.
The subsequent factor Kasia remembers, she was behind the metal bars of a hospital room crib, coated in displays. Her uncle was useless. Her aunt was in a coma. And nobody knew why this was taking place to her household.
Kasia, her mother and her brother have been quarantined within the hospital.
Investigators combed their residence.
“They took a lot of stuff — the coffee grounds, the flowers,” recollects Teresa Janus, Kasia’s mom.
Teresa Janus says she will be able to nonetheless see the scenes of that week taking part in vividly in her head like a film. But she’s lengthy steered away from media consideration, preferring to remain targeted on being robust for her household and shifting ahead.
Over the years, some members of the Janus household have spoken with reporters in regards to the case. Teresa Janus says she and her son are extra personal folks.
She requested to not be photographed however advised Act Daily News she was open to sharing some recollections as a result of she needed to be supportive of her daughter’s efforts to open up and inform her story.
“I think she got this from her father,” she says, smiling.
Even as she averted the highlight for years, Teresa Janus says she saved all of the associated newspaper clippings as a result of she needed her kids to have an opportunity to see them, and to know that “it was a big, big thing.”
“Sometimes you have to have a tragedy to change something,” she says.
It took authorities lower than a day to attach the dots between what had occurred to a few members of the Janus household and the case of 12-year-old Mary Kellerman, who died all of a sudden on September 29 within the close by Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, Illinois. All of them had taken Extra-Strength Tylenol. And investigators found cyanide contained in the capsules.
“We’re not going to give up hope on this case, even after 40 years. … This is not on a shelf collecting dust.”
Within days, three extra victims — Mary Reiner, Mary McFarland and Paula Prince — have been linked to the case.
Less than every week later, Tylenol producer Johnson & Johnson recalled 31 million bottles.
The subsequent 12 months, Congress handed a invoice that made tampering with medicines and different shopper items a federal crime.
And earlier than lengthy, each over-the-counter remedy and lots of meals merchandise can be bought in sealed packaging.
Investigators say they haven’t given up making an attempt to resolve the case
In the early days after the poisonings, police appeared near cracking the case.
“Investigators have ‘principal suspects’ in cyanide manhunt,” the entrance web page of The Daily Herald proclaimed on October 5, 1982.
But promising leads swiftly fizzled into useless ends.
As the fortieth anniversary looms, the case has gone on for thus lengthy that lots of the detectives who labored on it have since retired. A state legislation enforcement company that investigated within the early days now now not exists. Task forces have disbanded. And attainable breaks within the case have come and gone with none seen outcomes.
But Arlington Heights Police Sgt. Joe Murphy says the case stays an “open and active investigation.”
He says investigators from totally different jurisdictions are nonetheless coordinating their efforts. And the FBI is protecting all of the bodily proof in a single place.
“We’re not going to give up hope on this case, even after 40 years. … This is not on a shelf collecting dust,” he says.
Murphy says he can’t touch upon any particular items of proof, theories or suspects investigators now bear in mind. But he says they’re hoping developments within the forensic know-how used to investigate DNA may result in a break within the investigation — one thing that’s taking place extra usually with chilly instances across the nation.
“We still have all the capsules, all the bottles, the boxes that they were in, things along those lines. So that’s kind of what we’re focusing on right now, because advances are considerable since the last time they were examined, so we want to make sure that no stone is left unturned,” he says.
In 2009, FBI brokers searched the house of James Lewis, a Massachusetts man who served time for extortion after sending Johnson & Johnson a letter in 1982 vowing he’d cease the killings if the corporate gave him a $1 million payout. Lewis was convicted within the extortion case, however has denied he was liable for the poisonings. Investigators seized a pc from Lewis and picked up a pattern of his DNA. The Chicago Tribune not too long ago reported that some investigators are nonetheless pushing for him to be prosecuted within the killings, and that Lewis says he’s been handled unfairly and continues to disclaim involvement.
In 2011, the FBI requested a DNA pattern from Ted Kaczynski — the Unabomber — as investigators took a contemporary take a look at the unsolved case. Kaczynski denied any reference to these killings and acknowledged that he’d by no means possessed potassium cyanide.
Over the years, some victims’ households have questioned authorities’ conclusions within the case. Others have mentioned residing with the specter of an unsolved homicide solely deepens the tragedy their households are going through.
For her half, Kasia says she’s not targeted on the homicide investigation.
There was a time in her life when she says rage over what occurred to her household consumed her.
The previous continues to be one thing she lives with every single day. She by no means takes Tylenol. Whenever she’s in a retailer, she checks to verify a product is sealed correctly earlier than she buys it. And generally, the disappointment continues to be overwhelming — when she thinks of the graduations her dad couldn’t attend, or how he by no means acquired to know his grandson.
But she says years of remedy and yoga helped her let go of anger and guilt.
She lives by a mantra that’s hanging on the wall of her workplace, beneath an outdated photograph of her dad: “Today I choose happiness.”
She feels whoever’s accountable might be delivered to justice sometime – on this life or the following.
A 40-year-old photograph grew to become a window again in time
Kasia was speechless when she stumbled upon the photograph in her grandmother’s home just a few years in the past. There she was, as just a little woman with a mushroom haircut, peeking out between her mother and uncle’s legs, wanting so harmless and misplaced.
Somehow amid the throngs of individuals at Maryhill Catholic Cemetery on the day her father, aunt and uncle have been buried, photographer John H. White had seen her and shared the picture with the world.
It ran on the entrance web page of the Chicago Sun-Times, accompanied by a headline. “She mourns for her father.”
There are a number of copies within the field of newspaper clippings, and Kasia treasures each.
Looking at it’s a window again in time by her personal eyes. She sees how the second formed not solely her household, however the world.
“What you see is a little girl who has no idea what’s going on. I’m curious. I’m lost. I’m scared. All these emotions are wrapped up in this photo. … My face just says, ‘Our lives are all about to change. We’ve lost our innocence.’”
Finding the photograph many years after it was taken has propelled Kasia on a brand new leg of her journey to know what occurred that day and doc it. She’s determined to jot down a e book about her household’s expertise – not simply the tragedy they lived by and all they misplaced, however how they’ve discovered power and survived. And as a part of her analysis, she’s been reaching out to White and different photographers who coated the funeral, making an attempt to trace down extra photographs and ask for his or her reflections.
To today, she’s grateful that White zoomed in on her.
“I felt like I was an invisible person,” Kasia says. “But he didn’t focus on everybody else. He just saw me and he captured it. … In the chaos, someone found me.”
Now she’s bringing kin and pals collectively to share tales
So a lot about Kasia’s life has modified since that second when White’s shutter clicked.
The uncertainty of that day is way behind her. But she says it took her years to search out the power and help she wanted to share her story.
One day in elementary faculty, she remembers a classmate advised her to “get over it.” In highschool, one other classmate advised her “nobody wants to hear your story” when Kasia wrote a poem about feeling misplaced as she dealt together with her grief.
The phrases stung a lot that for a few years Kasia stayed silent.
She didn’t point out it in 2014, when she went on her first date with Jason Iverson, the person who would finally grow to be her second husband.
It wasn’t till practically a 12 months into their relationship that it got here up.
“It was September,” Jason recollects.
Kasia, he says, was appearing unusual.
“I couldn’t figure it out,” he says.
“Here’s why Septembers are hard,” Kasia advised him.
The anniversary month has all the time been significantly painful. But through the years, Kasia has used it as a chance to honor her family members’ lives.
Often in September she goes by the containers her mother saved, studying the newspaper clippings and pulling out her dad’s outdated issues. Sometimes she travels. One 12 months she went skydiving.
She considered her family members as she ready to leap.
“What if they wanted to do this and they just didn’t get the opportunity?” she questioned. “I’m going to do this for them.”
Kasia exhibits a photograph of a day she went skydiving to commemorate the anniversary of her family members’ deaths. “Strength” and Courage” are tattooed on her arms — phrases she retains in thoughts as she faces challenges in life.
Kasia’s dad purchased a bouquet of gladiolus for her mother the identical day he purchased the bottle of tainted Tylenol. This 12 months Kasia grew the flowers in her backyard. She says they symbolize the power of her mother and father’ love.
Septembers might be an emotional curler coaster, Kasia says. “I’m kind of up and down.”
“You haven’t been the last couple years,” Jason interjects. “Because you own it. It’s yours now.”
He’s been encouraging Kasia to share her story extra ever since he first heard her inform it. And he’s seen how opening up has helped her heal.
This 12 months, to mark the milestone anniversary, Kasia’s planning a memorial Mass and a celebration of life luncheon at a park.
“It is something that altered the life of every person in the world. … And I want people to know that, yeah, this was my family, and it has changed all of us.”
She’s gone from shying away from even mentioning what occurred to planning a serious occasion to commemorate it.
She’s invited dozens of relations, former neighbors and others who knew her family members to attend and share recollections about their lives.
“I want to hear stories and connect with people, and I want to document this,” she says. “What was my dad’s favorite color? What was he like in school? What was he like as a boss? … Good and bad, I want to hear those stories, because it’s a reflection of who I am.”
She’s looking for solutions on the submit workplace the place her dad labored
Time after time, Kasia has tried to name the Arlington Heights Post Office. She enters the quantity into her telephone, however one thing stops her earlier than she hits the inexperienced button.
It looks like a protracted shot that anybody there’ll bear in mind her dad 40 years later.
And explaining the backstory of how her family members died to strangers nonetheless makes her uncomfortable.
But right now she’s again in Arlington Heights, displaying a crew from Act Daily News the place she grew up. And as she stands outdoors the submit workplace the place her father as soon as labored, she decides to push her fears apart.
She cherishes her dad’s outdated submit workplace uniform and different mementos from his years working there. She’d love her dad’s former coworkers to come back to the celebration of life. The sympathy playing cards they despatched after his demise have been bringing her consolation for years. And she’s learn that his supervisors have been pallbearers on the funeral. There are so many questions she’d like to ask them.
Kasia takes a deep breath and energy walks by the submit workplace doorways. She walks as much as the counter and explains she’s in search of individuals who knew her dad.
“What was his route?” the clerk on the counter asks.
That’s one other element Kasia needs she knew.
“What was your dad’s name?”
“Adam Janus,” Kasia tells her.
The girl pauses for a second, then repeats his identify and shakes her head.
Kasia tries to jog her reminiscence. She tells her the years her dad labored on the submit workplace.
“He’s from…” she says, then lowers her voice to nearly a whisper, “the Tylenol case.”
The girl nods, however appears puzzled.
“So he left here in 1982?” she asks.
“He died,” Kasia says.
This is what she was afraid of. People are forgetting what occurred.
The girl says she solely began working at that submit workplace in 1986, however she offers Kasia the names of two mail carriers who’ve been there greater than 50 years and may bear in mind.
Kasia leaves her contact data and asks the lady on the counter to share it with anybody who may have solutions.
“I’m just trying to find out more about my dad,” she says as she heads out the door.
The tragedy remodeled her household’s neighborhood
The three-bedroom home the place the Janus household lived is on a tidy suburban avenue only some miles from the submit workplace.
Standing with Kasia on Mitchell Avenue as a college bus rumbles by on a sunny September morning, it’s arduous to think about the chaos that unfolded right here 40 years in the past.
For Kasia, being again on the road the place she grew up brings again a flood of recollections — a lot of them constructive. Yes, that is the place the place her dad, uncle and aunt took the poisoned tablets that killed them. But Kasia sees a lot extra right here.
The home of the nurse who heard her mother screaming and got here operating to attempt to assist that day earlier than the paramedics acquired there.
The residence of the lady who taught her mother tips on how to steadiness a checkbook when she all of a sudden discovered herself on her personal.
The neighbors who enveloped her household with love and help at a time when their world was spinning.
“They were like our second family,” Kasia says.
She lights up when she sees a former neighbor stroll out her entrance door.
“Pat?” she shouts. “It’s Kathy Janus.”
Patti Netzel, 64, tears up as quickly as she sees Kasia — who glided by Kathy when she was a child rising up in Arlington Heights.
For years, Kasia babysat her daughters. She remembers watching them splash collectively on the Slip ‘N’ Slide.
“What are you up to now?” Patti asks.
Paramedics carried three members of the Janus household out of this Arlington Heights residence on September 29, 1982.
Patti Netzel nonetheless lives in a neighboring residence. She remembers the frantic screams for assist when Adam Janus wouldn’t get up.
Kasia says she lives in Madison and works as a compliance specialist on the University of Wisconsin. She tells her former neighbor about her “Brady Bunch family,” which incorporates her son and husband, and in addition a stepson and step-grandson.
“Are you coming to the celebration of life?” she asks.
Patti says she’ll attempt to make it.
“I’m hoping it will be like a reunion,” Kasia says.
Patti and her household moved into the home subsequent to the Janus household in 1981.
The following 12 months, they watched in horror as paramedics arrived subsequent door and introduced Kasia’s father out on a stretcher. They have been devastated for his or her neighbors, and feared others on the road is also in peril.
“The next day the detective came to my door,” Patti recollects. “I asked him, ‘Do you know what happened? Do I need to move? Do I need to turn off my water?’”
The detective was tight-lipped. She says she ended up studying later from a newspaper reporter that tainted Tylenol was responsible.
Like many, she’s annoyed nobody has been charged within the killings, and that questions on what occurred and why stay unanswered. But she’s sure of 1 factor.
After the tragedy, she says, the neighborhood modified – for the higher.
“It brought us all closer,” she says, “and taught us to appreciate life more.”
A latest second renewed her resolve
Kasia sits cross-legged beside her father’s grave and runs her fingers over phrases etched in stone.
“NAJDROŻSZY MĄŻ I TATUŚ.” Dearest husband and father.
She’s come to this suburban Chicago cemetery many occasions for the reason that funeral.
When she was in highschool, she practiced driving on the cemetery’s roads. When she was going by a tough divorce, she got here right here and prayed for steering and power. More not too long ago, she’s introduced her son and tried to show him about his household’s legacy.
Kasia sees this cemetery as a protected and peaceable place the place she will be able to speak about something and her dad will pay attention.
She is aware of she was misplaced when she stood right here on October 5, 1982, within the second that ended up on the entrance web page of a Chicago newspaper.
Now, regardless of all of the solutions she’s nonetheless looking for, she’s sure she’ll discover her approach.
The final time she got here to this cemetery, she requested her dad for recommendation.
She advised him in regards to the celebration of life she was planning, and about how she desires to share her story.
“Am I doing the right thing?” she requested. “Is this something you want?”
In that second, she felt content material and calm, and he or she sensed she knew his reply.
Since then, she says, extra issues have began to fall into place.
Kasia not too long ago had an opportunity to fulfill with John H. White and speak with him about his images. And she simply acquired an electronic mail from one among her dad’s former submit workplace coworkers who desires to attach.
She’s lengthy considered her dad as a guardian angel. And sharing her plans with him on the cemetery solidified her dedication to press on.
“I feel like everything that’s happening to me,” she says, “is happening because of that moment with him.”
Telling her story nonetheless isn’t simple. She and her household suffered unimaginable heartbreak. But with every phrase she speaks out loud, she feels stronger.